H.P. Lovecraft's Witch House (2022)

2 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Angle Tangle

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

A loose, low-budget adaptation of Lovecraft's 1932 story "The Dreams in the Witch House," H.P. Lovecraft's Witch House chooses to ignore the Cthulhu Mythos in favor of a trippy, hallucinogenic feel; it doesn't always work, but it has enough good stuff to make it worth a look. Pretty grad student Alice (Portia Chellelynn) is on the run from an abusive ex, and takes refuge in the famous Hannah House in Indiana; the film was apparently shot in the real house, which is said to be haunted. Alice rents a room in the attic, becomes fascinated by the odd angles in the architecture ("sacred geometry") and finds some cryptic parchments under the floorboards. She believes that the angles are actually portals, perhaps to another dimension, and she soon finds out as she begins slipping in and out of them, seemingly at random. The film portrays these as weird montages, sometimes hard to decipher. Meanwhile, children vanish, there are strange rituals, and a gratuitous lesbian sex scene. Chellelynn is effective in the lead role, and the house itself adds some production value to a movie that is clearly pinching pennies. But if Lovecraft's work was about finding horror in the unknown and the indescribable, then this Witch House is largely true to his vision.